Thursday, March 5, 2015

Fisher Stanton, Valley High School’s Nantucket wannabe, has a cheating girlfriend. When he hires Darcy Walker to chase her to a local club, in true Darcy fashion she stumbles upon a dead body. Thing is, this body has secrets...and Darcy’s mysterious friend, Jaws, and the reporter, Tito Westbrook, have a vested interest. Both enlist Darcy to find the person responsible who has eluded them for years, but Darcy doesn’t solve crimes for free anymore—especially where Jaws is concerned. Knowing Darcy’s Achilles heel, Jaws blackmails Darcy into working for him.

In a true test of wills, Darcy and Jaws battle head-to-head—Jaws needs Darcy to help him end a bitter grudge war; Darcy needs Jaws to divulge the mystery surrounding her mother’s death. Haunted by a past that shaped her present, Darcy will stop at nothing to get answers. Even if it means breaking the law and being disloyal to her new boyfriend, Dylan Taylor, in the process.

DEFCON DARCY gives Darcy’s demons a name and ties up loose ends that made Darcy into the verb that she is. What she thinks she knows as truth, isn’t. What she wishes wasn’t true…is.

The problem is, when your life goes DEFCON 1, not everyone lives to tell about it.

When you’re a verb, you don’t always plan your excursions; they just sort of happened. This was the first trip, I admit, that I had to plan. The time ticked at eight o’clock. Murphy and Marjorie had just pulled into the driveway from a trip to the library. To safeguard against getting busted, I clocked in with Murphy five minutes ago and told him I was with Dylan. I clocked in with Dylan and told him I was with Murphy. Wearing commando-black, my lucky hat, and Chuck’s, I quietly lifted my second story window and shimmied my way down the bare maple tree. Jogging to the entrance of BTCC, the air cut through me like a sharp knife on butter.

In the spirit of duplicity, the sky was two-faced tonight like the moon. The east was cloudy, the west a midnight blue with a blanket of stars. I jumped up and down as the chill settled into my muscles, and at fifteen minutes past eight, Vinnie’s pink VW Bug sputtered to a stop in front of the big buffalo sign I hid behind.

This was what I liked about the misfits—when you told them to masquerade as someone else or break into private property on the sly, there were no questions, only a “What time?”

Excerpt

Maybe I should have a sex change operation.

A sex change operation might be the answer to becoming anonymous again. Here lately, guys noticed me—a fact that not only befuddled me but the legitimately gorgeous girls of Valley High School. To my right, Ben Ryan acted as though he’d cuff my wrists and force a marriage proposal. To my left, Jagger Cane looked like he’d jump in my pants and teach me the ways of the world. I had no intention of losing my v-card anytime soon, and if I did? Well, that led to the third guy who made my love triangle an official square. It would be with my best friend who was now my official boyfriend. Yup, in a rare moment of insanity, I agreed to be the regular kissing partner of the hottest guy I’d ever met. And let me confess, there had been some great kissing. Total. Spiritual. Awakening. But I was truly out of my league because if the world thought Ben Ryan and Jagger Cane were naughty dream material, Dylan Taylor was the benchmark on things that would make your girl parts quiver.

Like I said. Too many guys.

For a girl who swore to her father she would remain a virgin for life.

For a girl who swore to her father she would remain a virgin for life.

Why did I stay with Dylan? For one thing, he wasn’t a fastard—that’s Darcyspeak for guys who feed you a line of bull, only for you to find out they shovel the same crap to other unsuspecting girls. But with Dylan? Sigh. His words were genuine. He could kiss with the endurance of an Olympic athlete, and let’s face it, he was big, bad, and deadly—number one on my zombie apocalypse team if the world ever came to that. The problem was, love sucks. When you love someone, you should step aside and let that person evolve into what they were intended to be—their dreams should become yours. The challenge was to find that delicate balance of give and take where more often than not you were on the same page. All last semester, Dylan and I bickered because our relationship had failed to be symbiotic. Why? Because I couldn’t show him the real me—the me he would’ve rather cut off his right arm than rubberstamp the things I considered recreational. Why is it, you say, did I want this relationship anyway? A relationship I sometimes, eh, lied to keep copacetic? I’ll tell you why. Dylan’s body was nothing short of dirty poetry.

Shoving that stuff down would be criminal.

My name’s Darcy Walker, and I live in a suburb of Cincinnati called Valley, Ohio. Where some students were destined to be the leaders of tomorrow, some of us were your inspiration to try a little harder. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t take any of these guys seriously because I fell into this group and buried the competition. Some of us, no matter how hard we tried, were doomed to bring up the rear regardless of the assignment. We were the class clowns, the kids who stared out the windows, the note passers, and the ones not able to get our point across. People like me had a shelf life, and it ended senior year, diploma in hand…if we were lucky.